Smn Rework Suggestions After LL

[CasterSvarog]

I'm not sure about the summons/trance being ogcds would be a good thing. With the loss of egi assaults, ruin II (lol), DoT hardcast timings, and a decent supply of ruin IVs, we've lost a good amount of ogcds outside of our semi/demi phases, and that could cause cast timing issues in between our phases. But that's just a gut feeling. I'd have to actually have some finger feelings to be sure about it.

Honestly, the only reason I even dared bring up that idea was because of the change done to Ruin 3, which seems to have a 1.5 second cast time. Because of that, it should be possible to weave in 1 ogcd.

[Roda]

Honestly, the only reason I even dared bring up that idea was because of the change done to Ruin 3, which seems to have a 1.5 second cast time. Because of that, it should be possible to weave in 1 ogcd.

Yeah that might allow for enough wiggle room, but I'm also just thinking about how wonky server connections might be and how short .5s is. ;x


Also correction to my post "a good amount of Instant cast gcds" instead of "ogcds"

[Tulzscha]

Yeah that might allow for enough wiggle room, but I'm also just thinking about how wonky server connections might be and how short .5s is. ;x


Also correction to my post "a good amount of Instant cast gcds" instead of "ogcds"

It would, that's how AST works. The gcd is 2.5s, 1s is plenty to weave an ability. And a 1.5s cast for a primary filler spell is excellent for mobility, not that SMN ever had a problem there.

[Karshan]

It would, that's how AST works. The gcd is 2.5s, 1s is plenty to weave an ability. And a 1.5s cast for a primary filler spell is excellent for mobility, not that SMN ever had a problem there.

Yes 1 second is enough to weave, but maybe not those 3 mega animated spells you know ?

[Talec]

Lots of people seem to be happy about the summoner changes - but dunno I feel its just because it got even more flashier. But for what I see the problem seems to even get worse.

Since years we complained the clunkyness of this class and now we get a Summoner that goes through 6 different phases for one rotation? carbuncle, bahamut, garuda, ifrtit, titan, phoenix and then again? How long will our opener be? 2 minutes 20 seconds? How is that no more clunky?

[Roda]

Lots of people seem to be happy about the summoner changes - but dunno I feel its just because it got even more flashier. But for what I see the problem seems to even get worse.

Since years we complained the clunkyness of this class and now we get a Summoner that goes through 6 different phases for one rotation? carbuncle, bahamut, garuda, ifrtit, titan, phoenix and then again? How long will our opener be? 2 minutes 20 seconds? How is that no more clunky?

It'll be 2 minutes rotation, same as always.
ifrit, titan, and garuda only last for a set amount of gcds that are designed to take up the 45 seconds in between your demi summons.

[ssunny2008]

If you do not consider 6.0’s summoner a real summoner then there is really nothing left to say.

Yes every job is a string of animations, but it´s still a difference how it´s been made. From MNK i expect to be a fast hitting melee only class. SAM should be that hardhitting finisher class. Black magic is a symbol for destruction and so is BLM. White magic on the other hand has always been like something "positive" and of course it´s WHM is a healer. WAR is diverse, i would call someone with an axe a berserk, but since it´s a tank and not a burst-dps, being WAR seems fine.

I could go on with the list, but anyway i can´t see the current nor the new SMN as a real summoner. Yes you summon things, but next to carbuncle, bahamut and pheonix in their strict rotation, you just summon animations as you did in other FF games with Esper, GF, primal crystals. All of them don´t have coop or combo skills and there are not even real commands you can use. You don´t really interact with them, you don´t even have a carbuncle as mount, no you need to buy it in the shop.

Imagine you would be a real summoner, maybe someone who can have like 2 of 4 egis at once, maybe 2 finisher egis on top. (Just brainstorming)

- Let´s take Ifrit as core-egi, which gives you some fire commands. If your second egi is Garuda, Dot-skills getting expanded in their time, while aoe skills has a bigger range.
- Or if you´ve Shiva as second egi, you can combine fire and ice skills to set a water debuff on the enemy. The boss will get 10% more damage from lightning effects then, so of course Ramuh is a 3rd Egi you can summon for 10s, while the other 2 will be permanent.
- You could even combine Ifrit and Leviathan to create some fog-clouds and all players in there are getting buffed in evasion or maybe get a higher critical hit chance. Maybe NIN could use this fog to perform trickattack without mudra / his own stealth? Would be a nice class combo.
- At last Titan could be the other 10s Egi. Let him spawn 4 stones, where the group or a tank could take cover behind at several damage incomes. Maybe even Ifrit would be able to melt them, so they leave a hart hitting lava-aoe similar to Dotun.

Then you could take Shiva as prime-egi, which grants you more ice abilities and CC and you combine it the same or other ways with the rest. Garuda which grants more movement speed, more range, a windwall... Levi which could cleanse yourself or others, man so many possibilities...

You would interact with your egis, combine their elements and even in the raidparty it would spice things up. Being able to spawn stones or clouds the raid can interact with is much more than "press a button to shield or buff the whole raid in range". It´s interactive gameplay.
Sadly it would probably to complex for the most ppl and such stuff will surely never be implemented, but this is something i would call a summoner and not just a string of animations. Call me a dreamer, but 6.0 SMN is wasted effort for me and a pure lack of creativity.

And again, i would still vote for skilltrees too. It´s not hard to balance them. Give summoner an egi skilltree and a dot skilltree. Give MNK a positional-heavy tree and a blitz depended tree. Give Tanks the possibility to tank or to DPS, same with healers. Man there are so many ways to cater pretty much everyone on any class with stuff like a skilltree instead of static homogenized subclasses with roleskills. All those dumb discussions could end so easily with more possibilities on our side.

Or maybe it somehow matches together because a lot of thought was put into it?...

If i look at the story and lore, then no... neither if we look at older games and not even if we take FF14´s own lore / story. It matches together yes, but deeper thoughts are not really placed or easy "solutions" got placed. Just some examples:

- The Nanamo got poisened storyline... like yeah...
- Different races / classes... Why i´m able to become a dragoon without visiting ishgard? Why is GNB a tankclass, when Squall was a DPS-monster with sick limit breaks? Since when was Cloud a DRK? (Greatsword?)
Of course, we´re warrior of lights and can do everything easily. But we haven´t been able to switch classes easily in solo games, on the other hand we were able to be much more than "just that one class" per fight. (Casting, fighting, summoning, healing...)
Or Viera got introduced in the first splitterworld only, why does 1000 players run around as Viera here? Or Hrothgar which came suddenly out of nowhere? Raktika is the perfect Viera lore, but everything which affects us players, is none. As next we´re going to get male-viera caused by the community wish. It´s just a thing, because this is a MMORPG and far away from their lore, isn´t it?

There is a lot of more stuff like this, if we take a deeper look at it. SE did easy in this way by calling us the WoL and placing new areas. It got combined tricky in the story, but it doesn´t match lore-wise so well together / the lore is getting ignored to cater the players experiences and wishes.
This means, that arguments like "it has been in FF game X so or so" are not a real thing. As i´ve said, it´s an MMORPG in it´s first case and stuff is getting finetuned on that fact.

[Vallhallix]

The main thing for me that I’ve always hated on SMN is that the focus is on the caster and not the pet. This rework doesn’t fix that, if anything it doubles down on it. The gameplay they showed is fine, but the issue for me is the caster is using the attacks, I HATE that.

It’s a simple change, make the summon stay out for the duration and use the attacks rather than giving attacks to the caster. Failing that, at least make it so the summon enhances carbuncle, so carbuncle is using the attacks rather than the caster.

I just hate this design where the pet is just a bystander on a job where they should be central to the playstyle. I’d much rather the summons work like current demi bahamut than what they have in store.

Then hopefully they will create a class for you, maybe beast master. Because THIS is what summoner should have been from the start. And it's what the lore says the SMN is, the egis were never supposed to do the attacks according to the lore. The summoner was supposed to assume the powers of the primal, and they have been doing just that ever since the trances and deathflare were introduced. Big summons come in, do a big attack and then screw off, onto the next. To hell with this running around with chicken nuggets with terrible clunky AI who barely make a dent. The fact that some people to this day will still defend old summoner who had an entire pet that was completely useless is beyond me. Good riddance dots and egis, they won't be missed. Especially the egis, bane was fun though. But anyway s,m literally have most of the major primals, more love than any class got this expansion spell-wise. A broken system in which some pets got no use, completely reworked into abilitiess that will ALWAYS be used. On top of that, gave Summoner a new heal, gap closer, melee attack and added on to bahamut phase. It's time to stop demanding more after getting everything.

Lots of people seem to be happy about the summoner changes - but dunno I feel its just because it got even more flashier. But for what I see the problem seems to even get worse.

Most of us are, it's the same general people making the same complaints that Yoshi listened to in the past that made the class such a confused mess for this long that left most people opting to play red mage and black mage instead of it while trashing it every chance they got. Sorry, but when the general consensus of a class everywhere you go is negative, there's something wrong. I hope he will one day give them the job they want, thankfully SMN is no longer a confused missmatch of a class. And i've played the class since ARR.

This is the proper direction, take the one fun and interesting idea of summoner and turn it into a functioning rotation and class. Just looking at it, it already looks less awkward than current SMN. This also lays a more covenient groundwork for them to build up in further expansions

Summoner wasn't ever really a "pure" summoner, meaning they only summon and have access to no other abilities. Like, classic and iconic summoners throughout the franchise like Yuna, Rydia, Eiko and Garnet were more White mages and Black mages with the ability to occasionally summon. This new iteration is the closest the mainline franchise will have to a pure summoner. Technically, Dissidia and NT Yuna could be called pure in the same way 6.0 is but I digress.

Especially the more recent games like XV where in summons would come in, use their signature ability and then leave

[aveyond-dreams]

When it comes to lore restrictions vs fun gameplay, games tend to do better when they go the fun route.

For example, “due to lore” in WoW the developers continued to refuse to add playable High Elves despite a consistent push from the community and instead added Void Elves out of nowhere, ala 2019 fanfest when Hrothgar were revealed instead of male Viera. While in WoW it took the most recent Blizzard scandal for the devs to finally relent and give them High Elf customization options, here in FFXIV it only took a single expansion cycle for them to give the playerbase what they were asking for.

It’s a shame that it took this long for them to get summoner right, but I commend them for doing so at last nevertheless. I do not care at all about lore restrictions that can be written out easily. Even the existence of G’raha Tia as a main character would not be possible if they held true to such stringent restrictions since Miqo’te men are just as rare if not more than Viera, and he's become one of the most popular and beloved characters in the entire game.

Moving forward, the most logical progression would be for summoner to gain new summons whether they are trance upgrades/one offs like the new Ifrit/Garuda/Titan. Some likely candidates would be the Warring Triad, Alexander, Leviathan, Ramuh, etc. The possibilities are endless now that the class is no longer a poison mage.

[ssunny2008]

Most of us are, it's the same general people making the same complaints that Yoshi listened to in the past that made the class such a confused mess for this long that left most people opting to play red mage and black mage instead of it. I hope he will one day give them the job they want, thankfully SMN is no longer a confused missmatch of a class.

Such claims confuse me always. I see a lot of summoners running around in any content and given to ff.logs, SMN is as much played as RDM, NIN, DRG in the endgame meanwhile BLM is on the level of MNK, BRD, MCH which fall hard behind for obvious reasons. Only SAM overshines them all followed by DNC. So i really can´t underline "most of us are", "play XY instead."

I do not care at all about lore restrictions that can be written out easily.

You´ve claimed that SMN should be like the one from other FF titles, that they never had Dots etc... it´s called lore in some way. That you don´t care about it on the other hand makes it a bit invalid or?

PS: I hate Graha'Tia. Story-wise he should´ve died. It doesn´t make sense, that he´s still there. In a good story about war, characters needs to be sacrifized and yes, Haurchefant ftw!